Apple supplier monitoring shows 95% overtime compliance in March

Apple's supplier responsibility group reports that overtime compliance among a set of 500,000 workers it collects data on reached 95 percent in March, up from 89 percent in February.

The Cupertino, Calif., company's supplier code of conduct sets a limit of 60 work hours per week for factory employees and requires at least one day of rest per seven days of work.

After tracking a consistent set of suppliers and workers, Apple claimed "substantial improvement" from February to March, as noticed by The Next Web. According to the company, 95 percent of workers were in compliance last month with Apple's requirements.

"Encouraged by the success of this program to date, we expanded our weekly tracking to even more facilities deeper in the supply chain, and we are now monitoring compliance for over 800,000 workers," Apple wrote on its website.

Compliance for the larger set of suppliers stood at 91 percent in March. Apple promised to continue reporting the monitoring results "in the coming months."

The Fair Labor Association recently found violations of Apple's policy at partner Foxconn after conducting a thorough audit of the manufacturer's facilities. Foxconn pledged to limit overtime to just 9 hours a week in order to comply with Chinese laws. However, factory workers were quick to express concern that the changes would affect their livelihood.

"We have just been told that we can only work a maximum of 36 hours a month of overtime," worker Chen Yamei told Reuters last month. "I tell you, a lot of us are unhappy with this. We think that 60 hours of overtime a month would be reasonable and that 36 hours would be too little."

Apple issued its annual supplier responsibility report in January. The company conducted 229 audits throughout its supply chain last year, up 80 percent from 2010.

The company has also agreed to independent environmental audits of its supply chain. Activist Ma Jun said recently that Apple has "changed a lot" for the better in terms of openness about its suppliers.

Apple CEO Tim Cook even made his own visit to an iPhone production line at a Foxconn factory in China late last month. During his trip, Cook also visited retail stores in the country and met with high-level government officials.

....Foxconn pledged to limit overtime to just 9 hours a week in order to comply with Chinese laws. However, factory workers were quick to express concern that the changes would affect their livelihood.

"We have just been told that we can only work a maximum of 36 hours a month of overtime," worker Chen Yamei told Reuters last month. "I tell you, a lot of us are unhappy with this. We think that 60 hours of overtime a month would be reasonable and that 36 hours would be too little."

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Originally Posted by John.B

Just wondering if anyone bothered to ask the workers if they wanted their overtime reduced -- before instituting the new policy...

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Originally Posted by hill60

Hey, leave them out of this, this is about assuaging the guilt of the (relatively) wealthy and has nothing to do with what the workers want.*

*The above post may contain traces of sarcasm, if you are allergic please seek medical advice.

I'll tell you what, if I lived at the facility where I worked for a month or months at a time, I would want to work as many hours possible to make as much money as I could, only getting enough sleep to be able to perform my job well. Allow me the choice of how many overtime hours I want to work and then leave me the F alone.

Why can't people just butt out??? As long as it's my choice and I'm not a slave or being held by gunpoint, let me make my own decisions as an adult.

Why can't people just butt out??? As long as it's my choice and I'm not a slave or being held by gunpoint, let me make my own decisions as an adult.

But wait a minute, if you can't but into someone's life and tell them what they can and can't do based on an arbitrary set of standards, especially from thousands of miles away and in a completely different culture, how could any of the world's problems ever get solved?

Did you expect anything less from a country (I'm an American) that will bail out banks in an instant, but cannot figure how to keep its own citizens employed and healthy?

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Originally Posted by F1Ferrari

But wait a minute, if you can't but into someone's life and tell them what they can and can't do based on an arbitrary set of standards, especially from thousands of miles away and in a completely different culture, how could any of the world's problems ever get solved?

/s

Originally Posted by Granmastak: Labor unions managed to kill manufacturing a long time ago with their unreasonable demands. Now the people they were trying to protect, are out of a job.